2 resultados para Visual Pathways

em Deakin Research Online - Australia


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Background

Psychophysical measurement of the function of individual precortical visual pathways (magnocellular, parvocellular and koniocellular) has enabled the development of sensitive tests for glaucoma and has enhanced understanding of its pathophysiology. Such pathways can be further subdivided into their “On” and “Off” components, which have anatomical and physiological asymmetries. This study investigated whether On and Off subdivisions of the magnocellular (M) pathway are differentially affected by glaucoma.

Methods:
20 participants with glaucoma and 20 controls underwent two psychophysical procedures that have been shown to assess the M pathway (steady pedestal task) and its On and Off subdivisions (pedestal-delta-pedestal task) respectively. Luminance discrimination thresholds were measured foveally, using both increment and decrement stimuli.

Results:
The steady pedestal (undifferentiated M-pathway) task separated the glaucoma and control groups (p = 0.04) with equivalent outcomes for increment and decrement targets. The pedestal-delta-pedestal task (isolated On and Off M-pathway subdivisions) also differentiated between groups (p = 0.025), but the outcome was not dependent on which subdivision was isolated.

Conclusions:
This study found that increment and decrement targets can be used with equal effectiveness for detecting contrast processing deficits in early glaucoma. Outcomes further suggested that glaucoma affects On and Off subdivisions of the M-pathway equivalently.

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Some people who experience migraine demonstrate reduced visual contrast sensitivity that is measurable between migraines. Contrast sensitivity loss to low spatial frequency gratings has been previously attributed to possible impairment of magnocellular pathway function. This study measured contrast sensitivity using low spatial frequency targets (0.25–4 c/deg) where the adaptation aspects of the stimuli were designed to preferentially assess either magnocellular or parvocellular pathway function (steady and pulsed pedestal technique). Twelve people with migraine with measured visual field abnormalities and 17 controls participated. Subjects were tested foveally and at 10° eccentricity. Foveally, there was no significant difference in group mean contrast sensitivity. At 10°, the migraine group demonstrated reduced contrast sensitivity for both the stimuli designed to assess magnocellular and parvocellular function (P < 0.05). The functional deficits measured in this study infer that abnormalities of the low spatial frequency sensitive channels of both pathways contribute to contrast sensitivity deficits in people with migraine.